124 CEYLON COFFEES. 



was unlimited, its profusion being only equalled by the 

 ignorance and inexperience of those to whom it was 

 intrusted ; five millions sterling being sunk in the " Coffee 

 craze " in less than as many years. The rush for coffee 

 lands at this period in Ceylon was only paralleled by 

 the movement towards the gold mines of California and 

 Australia, but with this painful difference, that the wild 

 enthusiasts in Ceylon instead of thronging to disinter 

 were hurrying to bury their gold, for in the very midst 

 of their visions of riches a crash suddenly came which 

 awakened the victims to the reality of their ruin. The 

 financial panic of 1845 in England rapidly extended its 

 destructive influences to Ceylon ; remittances ceased, 

 credit failed, prices fell, and the first announcement on 

 the subsidence of the turmoil was the doom of protec- 

 tion and the withdrawal of the distinctive duty which 

 had so long screened the British coffee plantations from 

 competition with those of Java and Brazil. The con- 

 sternation thus produced in Ceylon was proportionate to 

 the extravagance and hopes that were blasted, coffee 

 plantations being forced into the market, and many sold 

 off for a twentieth part of the outlay incurred in forming 

 them, while others that could not be sacrificed at any 

 price were abandoned and allowed to return to their 

 natural jungle. For over three years the enterprise 

 appeared paralyzed, the ruined disappeared and the timid 

 retreated, but those who, combining judgment with 

 capital, persevered, succeeded eventually, not alone in 

 restoring energy to the enterprise, but in imparting to it 

 the prudence and experience gleaned from former similar 

 disasters. Still, the crisis, had it not been precipitated 

 by the calamities of 1845, must have ensued eventually, 

 from the indiscretion of the previous period; and the 

 healthy condition which coffee planting appears to 



